Archive for May, 2009

URL structure is one of the factors in determining how “search engine friendly” a website is. Search engines like clean, static URL’s. They don’t like messy dynamic url’s. They’ve gotten better at crawling and indexing URL’s over the years, but the bottomline is, that they still have issues doing it. Especially, if there are more than 3 dynamic parameters in the URL.

Ideally, the URL structures should be static, and reveal what the page is about. A simple and clear URL structure is much easier for both search engine spiders and human beings.

Static URL’s that contain keywords will often rank better than dynamic URL’s that don’t contain any keywords. Additionally, the keywords in URL can enhance CTR, and will be bolded in SERPs.

Another problem with dynamic pages is load time. A dynamically generated URL comes from web pages that are generated from scripts, which put together page content from a database or multiple files “on the fly” by a server, when a user asks to see a webpage.

Dynamic URLs contain search engine unfriendly parameters like question mark (”?”), &, $, =, +, and % etc. In case you’re wondering what a static URL looks like, below are 2 examples. One is of a static url & the other is a dynamic url:

Static URL: www.domain.com/videos/video-name.html
Dynamic URL: http://www.domain.com/videos/html/topic.asp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&articletID=r000450&parentCat=vid7

If you are in the process of comparing content management systems, this is definitely something to keep in mind.

Some search engine crawlers, such as Google’s, will index dynamically-generated pages, but others will not index pages when they see those symbols, especially the question mark. Some search engines will only index a dynamically-generated page that is linked from a static page. Which means, the search engine will not follow links from dynamically-generated pages.

If you are going to have dynamic pages on your web site, it is important NOT to have session ID’s presented to the search engines.

Session IDs:
Session IDs are another big issue when it comes to URL structure. Session variables are unique strings of text in a URL that are generated each time a user visits a site. This means that every time a search engine crawlers visits the site, it gets a new session ID.

Session variables cause the same page to appear with constantly changing URLs. This runs the risk of getting pages flagged or penalized for duplicate content since the same content appears on different URLs.

A URL rewrite can change the dynamic URLs to make them more search engine and user readable. This means that a webserver can be configured to have a dynamic URL appear as a static HTML page.

Additional issues that dynamic pages create, even if they appear in the URLs as static pages, is that they are often slower-loading than plain HTML pages. This is because of the data processing required by the server to put them together on the fly. The slow “page-load” time can affect keyword ranking and possibly even indexing. Especially, if the spider decides to move on because the page took too long to load.

Reasons Why Session IDs are bad for SEO:
1) The Spider always finds a different URL. It can’t find the URL with the original session id. This new url which contains a different session id, appears as a duplicate page, and Google assigns zero importance. Then, the Googlebot goes looking to crawl the original page, and gets an error message.

2) Everyone linking to your page will be linking to a different URL. All the Inbound links will be different because everyone has separate session id’s. This is undesirable. You need links to get a page to rank.

The solution to those messy dynamic URL’s is to use a URL Rewrite, and search engine friendly 301 Redirects.

URL Directory structure:
Directory structure refers to how directories are set up on servers. “Directory depth” is the number of directories in a URL. When your website content and files are grouped into a directory structure, your URL will reflect this structure.

For example:
www.MyDomain.com has a directory depth of 0
www.MyDomain.com/category has a directory depth of 1 (category is a directory)
www.MyDomain.com/category/product has a directory depth of 2 (category is a directory, and product is a subdirectory)

Regarding “Directory depth”, there typically aren’t any indexing issues. But, some algorithms could discount the weight given to pages that are multiple levels down in a Web site’s directory structure. Some search engines consider the pages closest to the root directory the more important pages on your site.

Relevant directory names are helpful for both search engines and human users since they provide an idea about the content of the URL. It’s a best practice to use keywords in the URL structure in the form of directory names and subdirectories to optimize your website.

Additional Reading:
Why Session ID’s And Search Engines Don’t Get Along
SEO Best Practices for URL Structure
A Better URL Structure for SEO
Supercharge Your URLs For Maximum SEO Impact
User and Search Friendly URL Design for Multi-Language Websites
Dynamic URLs In The Eyes Of A Search Engine
URL Rewriting: Increase Organic Traffic By Using Dynamic URLs That Look Static

Photo Credit: schill

Website navigation structure and behavior affect the ease with which search engine spiders can navigate through the site and index it. Your site navigation should facilitate the uninterrupted movement of crawlers within the site.

Search engines prefer sites which are easy for them to navigate and retrieve information related to the site’s topical information, and consequently rank them higher for the site keywords. Therefore it is very important for the site to have a simple navigation structure that is easy for the spiders to crawl.

There are many types of navigation structure that can make it search engine-friendly or not.

Simple text-based navigation is the most search engine-friendly. Apart from being easily followed by spiders, text-based navigation gives an opportunity to include the keywords in the page content. The keywords included in the navigation are valued by all search engines.

However, it is not always possible to incorporate text navigation in the site because of design/aesthetic reasons. Even if the navigation cannot be text-based, the best practices listed below should be followed to make sure that the site navigation is search engine-friendly.

JavaScript based navigation: Search engine crawlers can read JavaScript but cannot parse it; hence, they are unable to follow the links embedded in the JavaScript code. Usage of JavaScript based linking would not allow the crawlers to follow the links and crawl/index the sites completely. If the navigation has to be JavaScript based, it should be made sure that in case the scripts are blocked by user settings, they should still be able to navigate through the site. It’s recommended to use the html noscript tag.

Flash navigation: Flash is not parsed by search engine crawlers in normal circumstances (unless the text/HTML alternative is provided or unless the flash movie is using deep linking to all the content). The reason for search engines being unable to read flash code is that flash is published in the .swf format which does not contain the code (code is embedded in .fla files) which are not published on the pages. This means that in order for search engines to read the flash embedded content and navigation, they will have to decompile the flash movie, which is not done by search engines at this point. It’s recommended using SWFObject to replace flash video on a webpage, so you can include text.

Image based navigation: Often, the site design requires the navigation to be in form of images. Search engines can follow the image links (as long as they are not JavaScript based) but using image based navigation takes away the ability to create keyword targeted navigation. Quite often while embedding rollover or other interactive images for navigation, JavaScript is used for linking. It should be made sure that the links behind the images are not JavaScript based.

It’s recommended to use the Alt attribute whenever an image-based navigation must be used.

Sliding/DHTML menus: If the site structure and architecture requires the use of rollover menus. Most often, the sliding menus are implemented on the sites using pure JavaScript for interactivity and functionality of the navigational links. The best practice is to use the CSS/JS hybrid navigation to make sure that the links embedded in the navigation are readable and followed by search engines. In case JavaScript has to be used, it should be made sure that the JavaScript code is placed in external files instead of page code.

Using a drop-down or pull-down menu helps you save on screen space when you have a lot of material that needs to be displayed on your pages, or a complicated multi-level navigational structure. In general it is recommended to use XHTML and CSS style sheets to present drop-down or pull-down menu navigation so that the search engines will still see the href links when indexing your Web page. If you must use drop-down or pull-down menus using JavaScript or a CGI script as your main navigational format, remember to include a secondary form of navigation to allow search engine spiders to follow links to the sections of the web site easily. Eg: footer text links.

Regardless of the navigation structure, both a Webpage sitemap and an XML sitemap should be created.

Suggested Reading:
Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Types of Navigation
Hierarchical, Site-wide, and Locally-determined Navigation
How to Determine a Website’s Navigation Structure
Navigation Menu Versus In-Content Links
Drop-Down or Pull-Down Menus
The 8 Types of Navigation Pages
Creating a navigation structure for both usability & SEO
SEO: Breadcrumb Trail Boosts Rankings
SEO Basics: Text Navigation Links vs. Image Links

Photo Credit: walt_s

Is there an optimal frequency of blog posting? Is it once per day? Every Tuesday and Thursday? Once/week? Once/month? Something else?

My frequency of blog posting is usually approximately once every 7 days. I think it’s safe to assume that every SEO Consultant that gets busier with client work, blogs less. This usually happens in waves, and it affects the frequency of his/her blog posting.

Darren Rowse wrote a great post answering these questions. He sums it up by saying it doesn’t matter as long as the posts are consistent & quality:

My main advice on posting frequency is to be consistent and keep the quality of your posts as high as possible. There are successful blogs who post 20 times a day and others that are lucky to post 20 times a year - any level of post CAN work.

In Darren’s post, something that wasn’t addressed is whether or not the frequency of posting affects the amount of RSS subscribers you have?

I’ve thought about installing the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin that says, “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!”

Is that plugin too obnoxious? Does it interfere with the user experience? In my case, I’ve put the RSS Subscribe button on the right sidebar. It’s there. Yep, I’d love to have more RSS subscribers. But, I don’t want to be annoying about asking. I can’t help but wonder if the sidebar button is enough of a request to ask people to subscribe? Probably not. But ya know, people will subscribe if that’s the way they like to consume content.

Bloggers that have accomplished acquiring a lot of RSS subscribers describe in 10 or 11 ways, how to find new RSS subscribers.

As I get busier and blog less, I console myself by thinking it’s okay not to blog so frequently, because the priorities ARE client work. Not blogging.

To attempt to answer the question of whether or not the frequency of blog posting affects your RSS subscribers, I gotta believe that it does; As long as you’re writing quality content.

And, you’re pages will get indexed and, you’ll be found thru search engines & if you promote your blog using social media you’ll increase the chances even more of picking up more blog subscribers.

I find blogging is like playing sports. Some days you just can’t be beat. While other days you’re lucky just to be in the game. I’ll try my best to keep writing quality content.

Rest assured that if you don’t see a post from me within a week, that I’m certainly thinking about what to post, and working hard on the priority stuff.

Photo credit: Mexicanwave

Using the internet for business development is easier than it was in our fathers generation. Contact information for people is everywhere. You just gotta know how to find it, and then know what to do with it once you have it.

It’s like fishing. You’re just fishing for new business. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

For efficiency, you should set-up a process. A process which you can execute smoothly and quickly. You need to remember that this is a numbers game. So the process will help things move along quickly, yet smoothly.

Discovery process: How do you get the email? How do you find the right person to contact? Your goal is contact (via DM), and/or to find their email address.

1) Read about a company in the news, or get a list of companies from a trade show, or a list of companies from an association.

2) Linkedin & Hoovers are great for discovering who the right person is.

3) Use Google, Facebook, and Twitter to research the individual. Once you found the right person, follow them on Twitter. If they follow you back, you can communicate via Direct Messages. The same applies for Linkedin & Facebook.

Use Google to search for [email @companyname.com] to find the email format the targeted company uses. Use Google News to discover current events about the company you are researching. And, it might even mention something about your contact person. Then you’ll be better able to customize your email.

4) Use Domain Tools, and look for the email contact for the domain. This might not be your contact, but it could reveal what the company email format it. Then, once you find the right name on Hoovers or Linkedin, just send them an email using that format.

Writing the email: People don’t want to read more than 1 short paragraph about a stranger trying to sell them something. Get your message across in a few sentences. And, list your contact information, in your email signature. Make sure to include a link to your website, and possibly a social media site or two. Start by using that email as a base template to build on.

Personalize each email as best you can as it pertains to the potential client and any information that you discovered which may be beneficial in mentioning.

The structure of your email could contain 3 components.
- A short intro of who you are
- The benefits of using you.
- Close the email with 1 question, asking for a phone call.

Ask for the call. If they’re interested they’ll respond to your email. If they don’t respond, move on. Keep up a good momemtum. The object here is quantity. You’re fishing, and you need to cast out a lot of bait to get a bite. It’s all a numbers game. Keep plugging away at it. Eventually, you’ll contact someone that is interested in whatever you have to offer.

The Phone Call:
Start out by sending the email. Don’t be tempted to use the phone for the initial contact. Email seems to be less intrusive & less threatening. If people are interested, they’ll respond. Don’t be pushy. Be real. Be yourself. And, DON’T SELL too hard.

If you are very knowledgable about your subject, then sit back relax and enjoy the call. Ask questions, offer advice. But don’t giveaway the farm. Ask for the business. Be gentle though. Nobody likes pushy people.

Thats it. Happy hunting!

Photo Credit: Josh Sommers